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Mattermost – open-source platform for secure collaboration

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Re: Mattermost – open-source platform for secure collaboration

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We tried Zulip about a year ago. There were loads of things we loved about it - the threading model in particular - but the learning curve was steep for non-technical members and the mobile app lacked a couple of key features (share sheet integration was the big one, from memory). We also looked at Quill, which had a similar threading model but … was bought and then sank without a trace. We ended up on Slack, which i…

What made the learning curve higher for non-technical members on Zulip than it was on Slack? It’s been a few years since I used Zulip, but I don’t feel like it had a particularly different level of complexity.

I think the fact that you must give a thread topic to send a message.

It's not particularly difficult concept, but different from every other chat app. And for a large user base being confronted with this demand "when they just want to send a message" is frustrating.

Re: Mattermost – open-source platform for secure collaboration

#62
post #17

I wished my Organization would adopt Mattermost. Using it for years as a Chat to stay in touch with my friends. My Org uses MS Teams (because it is already bundled with MS 365). What Mattermost is missing is a Videochat / Videoconferencing option - there is a plugin but I didn´t tried it yet: https://mattermost.com/marketplace/microsoft-teams-meetings/

What do you like about Mattermost that’s missing in MS Teams?

I like that Mattermost treads Channels as Groupchats, and you can reply to a Chatmessage or just add to the Conversation where in Teams you have Conversations where you can reply to or start a new one, this leads to people replying via new conversation or replying while it's a new conversation.

I also dislike the notion of Teams with Subchannels in Teams and the hard cut between Chat and Teams - I like the way Mattermost does it more: a Element between Channels and Chats.

Re: Mattermost – open-source platform for secure collaboration

#63
post #17

I wished my Organization would adopt Mattermost. Using it for years as a Chat to stay in touch with my friends. My Org uses MS Teams (because it is already bundled with MS 365). What Mattermost is missing is a Videochat / Videoconferencing option - there is a plugin but I didn´t tried it yet: https://mattermost.com/marketplace/microsoft-teams-meetings/

Mattermost v7 was released on Thursday and includes video conferencing functionality! [0] > Channels: Voice calls and screen share (beta) [0] https://mattermost.com/blog/mattermost-v7-0-is-now-available...

Thanks for bringing this to my attention; I will try it despite ReadOnlyFriday :)

Re: Mattermost – open-source platform for secure collaboration

#64
post #4

They decided to up their price per user by a significant amount not too long ago... our self-hosted instance suddenly became more expensive than Slack but with an obviously not nearly as polished product as Slack. So we moved over to Zulip because at least they do their own thing, we haven't had any regrets over the switch to Zulip.

We tried Zulip a couple times and ended up setting up a Matrix server when Slack became unbearable. The advantages of being able to federate with other channels is high, like almost everyone I have severe channel overload and I want an application which will be open all the time to reach as many people as possible.

It's almost coincidence, though, both Zulip and Matrix became 'good enough' around the same time, and we actually tried to move to Zulip at one point, which I think hardened opinions. I do like the semi-threaded approach Zulip takes, just not as much as I like even the possibility of a future where I can use Matrix for as much as possible.

Re: Mattermost – open-source platform for secure collaboration

#65
post #4

They decided to up their price per user by a significant amount not too long ago... our self-hosted instance suddenly became more expensive than Slack but with an obviously not nearly as polished product as Slack. So we moved over to Zulip because at least they do their own thing, we haven't had any regrets over the switch to Zulip.

We're on a freemium plan for slack. Works fine and doesn't cost us a thing. We don't care about having an archive of chats. That's not what it is for.

Self hosted would cost us more in devops money than we'd end up paying even for a premium SAAS contract for whatever you would use for this. People think devops is free, it rarely is and usually is the most expensive thing in terms of cost. Especially doing it properly can eat into development time quickly. Which unless you are bored and have nothing better to do is even more costly. Somebody costing 1000/day spending even half a day on this adds up quickly. And it's never just half a day. The point of hosted SAAS software is getting people like that out of the equation.

You can pretty much run a small startup on freemium accounts for a lot of things. Our biggest IT cost is google docs and google cloud for our actual infrastructure. These days we are also paying for a few additional things (Asana, Figma) but we started out with freemium accounts for that as well.

Re: Mattermost – open-source platform for secure collaboration

#66
post #17

I wished my Organization would adopt Mattermost. Using it for years as a Chat to stay in touch with my friends. My Org uses MS Teams (because it is already bundled with MS 365). What Mattermost is missing is a Videochat / Videoconferencing option - there is a plugin but I didn´t tried it yet: https://mattermost.com/marketplace/microsoft-teams-meetings/

What do you like about Mattermost that’s missing in MS Teams?

Teams is widely hated by many here because of its spyware capabilities.

Re: Mattermost – open-source platform for secure collaboration

#67
post #4

They decided to up their price per user by a significant amount not too long ago... our self-hosted instance suddenly became more expensive than Slack but with an obviously not nearly as polished product as Slack. So we moved over to Zulip because at least they do their own thing, we haven't had any regrets over the switch to Zulip.

Zulip is really underrated. It's a chat app that doesn't eat your life, but just provides the service of helping you to communicate. It doesn't want to interrupt your workflow. It doesn't try to connect to everything. It makes it easy to organize work conversations and doesn't wish to be the remote work coffee machine. It seems unreal that nowadays, I find solace in a software for finally trying to help me instead of…

When everyone on the team learn to use Topics, it's life changer.

Re: Mattermost – open-source platform for secure collaboration

#68
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What made the learning curve higher for non-technical members on Zulip than it was on Slack? It’s been a few years since I used Zulip, but I don’t feel like it had a particularly different level of complexity.

I think the fact that you must give a thread topic to send a message. It's not particularly difficult concept, but different from every other chat app. And for a large user base being confronted with this demand "when they just want to send a message" is frustrating.

Zoho Cliq solves this by using ML to parse the message and give a suitable name. It's suitable 7/10 times, and the remaining 3 - it either doesn't matter that much or is trivial to rename.

Zulip should try that if they haven't already.

Re: Mattermost – open-source platform for secure collaboration

#69
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Self-Hosted was free to you? What does self-hosted even mean otherwise

Self-hosted is entirely orthogonal to price. Microsoft Exchange and Oracle 21c are both self-hosted, for instance.

For further elaboration, self-hosted just means that you get a license to install the code on a server you control - whether that license is FL/OSS, something proprietary, or some middle ground (open core etc).
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